


Palette In Parallel

by ka_tsu_ra



Series: We Two Boys Together Clinging [2]
Category: Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, Super Sentai Series
Genre: M/M, Pre-Series, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 03:28:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4903873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ka_tsu_ra/pseuds/ka_tsu_ra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To go from connection to solitude and back is disorienting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Palette In Parallel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mostlyjustgoose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mostlyjustgoose/gifts).



> This is essentially my morning pages for today. It's the shortest thing I'll ever post here, I think. I'm nowhere near happy with it, but I resolved to get it posted. If you liked it, lemme know. I'm gonna go lie down.

Marvelous changed his hair first. He stopped keeping it up for a little while, then decided he hated how it shaped his face when he finally noticed himself in the mirror again. He spent a little time for the next few days picking and raking and snipping at it, not happy, searching for a face that wasn't his.

He changed the place, the ship, next. She would never be a different place, but he could make her harder to recognize. That's the truly damnable thing about losing someone entwined in your life. You see them in everything and the pain, the absence, flares freshly. You see them – or expect to see them – in chairs and doorways. You see and touch their things and are suddenly and powerfully aware that they can never be the last person to touch them again, that you're rubbing the dust of them off by handling these things.

He folded the banners and left them in a chest out of the way. He stashed and sold and threw out some things and burned a select few one night. It was his celebration, his reward for going down to a planet and finding a Ranger Key all on his own. Some things he burned were bottles that popped in the fire and stung his eyes when their contents sizzled off.

Marvelous didn't decide to change the way that he dressed. His clothes didn't frame his face, and he was by that time dragged halfway out of his mourning stupor and focused singularly on the dream. The coat was a good found treasure, though, even if he found it aboard the ship. It wasn't his, technically, but he'd never seen AkaRed wear it. Or anything besides the usual, really. Wearing it made his silhouette long and proud, provided a weight he felt he needed.

And it was red.

He couldn't change himself – the inside parts of himself – half as fast as he wanted to. As he needed to. He couldn't kill the parts of him that trusted. They'd endured too much for willpower alone to smother them.

Out of everyone, Joe had come closest to seeing the open, fearful person that Marvelous was before he gathered them aboard the Galleon. The Captain was still a work in progress when he met Joe.

Joe, for his part, changed very little in the intervening days between Sid's death and his fated meeting with Marvelous. His circumstances didn't allow him time to reflect, to alter course, to do anything but run. For the rest of his life.

He wasn't ready to stop. Fighting was easy, or at least simple. So was running. Sitting on a bare bunk, staring at the wall, sitting safe and still long enough to think, that was hard.

He cried a lot. Not in front of Marvelous and not in any obvious way, but he did. He was good at crying silently and better at withdrawing to his cabin and exerting himself to the point of exhaustion when the hurt hit him hardest. Distraction helped, simple goals helped. First: Stay alive as long as you can. Later: Just go until you can't.

They were both so raw back then. They concealed it through bravado and – more often – simple avoidance. As much as Marvelous might have liked, it wasn't out of distrust that they avoided and hid from each other in those first few weeks. The pull was there, the same pull that drew strong words out of their throats when they met, and the red loops around their necks chafed and bit into them the longer they kept to their cabins or separate decks. No, it was never about distrust.

More than anything, it was a mutual fear of disappointing the other.

Marvelous couldn't be the bright, vibrant, immovable Sun that had drawn Joe in at all times. And that didn't feel fair to Joe.

There were days Joe couldn't be strong, couldn't be cool or competent, couldn't be much of anything at all. That wasn't what Marvelous was looking for when he gave him the Key, was it?

But the strong words – that Marvelous wanted Joe himself, that Joe would follow Marvelous even beyond his brilliant dream – were true. They were true enough to wear through the fear and resistance.

Marvelous was the first to give in. That ate at him for days after, even when he'd only told Joe he could no longer eat in his cabin in the interest of keeping the bug population down. Or at least localized. Only Doc's arrival really put a dent in that problem.

So they ate together. Drank together. Clashed the way strong personalities will. They drifted in and out of moods they refused to explain, and for the time being explanation wasn't a priority. They turned to distraction instead.

Excessive situps meant arm wrestling was in order. Or an argument. Or a treasure hunt.

A thrown bolt on the hatch up to the crow's nest meant promises of fresh bread with dinner and cake for dessert.

It wasn't important, back then, to exorcise the too-near past. It was easier, more immediately satisfying, to let what raw parts they could stand to show heal together. It was an imperfect closure, it would have to be re-broken and re-opened and re-set another time, but it was strong and it would keep them alive.

 


End file.
